Assuming Control

Sunday, August 12, 2018 – Assuming Control

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. ~ Lao Tzu

In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. ~ James Madison

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. ~ H. L. Mencken

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. ~ Isaac Asimov

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy. ~ Henry Miller

The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. ~ Malcolm X

One man with a gun can control one hundred without one. ~ Vladimir Lenin

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it. ~ Clint Eastwood

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination. ~ Robert Frost

Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea. ~ Nikola Tesla

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. ~ Charles Darwin

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs. ~ Andrew Carnegie

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate. ~ Isaiah Berlin

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles. ~ Pat Paulsen

I’m from Texas, and one of the reasons I like Texas is because there’s no one in control. ~ Willie Nelson

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. ~ Groucho Marx

The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert. ~ Vince Lombardi

They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves. ~ Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn’t really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing. ~ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. ~ Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Let me tell you that the children from their very birth are born to evil. Satan seems to have control of them. He seems to take possession of their young minds, and they are corrupted. Why do fathers and mothers act as though lethargy was upon them? They do not mistrust that Satan is sowing evil seed in their families. ~ Ellen G. White

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension and man began to lose control of it. ~ Vaclav Havel

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. ~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part. ~ Brian Eno

Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over. ~ Eric Clapton

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward. ~ Amelia Earhart

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers. ~ Lewis Thomas

If you can’t control your peanut butter, you can’t expect to control your life. ~ Bill Watterson

My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on. ~ Joan Rivers

I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. ~ Marilyn Monroe

My life didn’t please me, so I created my life. ~ Coco Chanel

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords. ~ John Muir

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